This article
appeared freely on the Internet on August 9, 2006 at
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/10/15/112430.shtml and is archived here only for
scholarship, research, education, and personal use by those previously
requesting it in accordance with the "fair use" provision in Title 17 Section
107 of the copyright law.

Israel's Nuclear Blackmail

Samson
Option: Israel's Plan to Prevent Mass Destruction Attacks

David EberhartTuesday, Oct. 16,
2001

With American bombing raids into Afghanistan and a tough
President Bush intimating more of the same for other
terrorist-harboring nations, experts and armchair war-watchers
are inserting nuclear powerhouse Israel into the calculus of
potential Armageddon in the Middle East.

Adding yet other variables, a defiant Saddam Hussein issued
an ominous warning in late August, just weeks before the terror
attacks on New York City and the Pentagon: "The battle [against
the U.S.] continues on the economic, political and military
fields. We are convinced we will be victorious."

All that the saber-rattling Iraqi dictator left out of this
latest diatribe was a bold repeat of his 1991 pre-Desert Storm
boast that if America attacked, the first to feel his wrath in
the "mother of all battles" would be Israel.

After decades of living among hostile neighbors, Israel has
yet to be attacked by an enemy using nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons. One reason may be the horrific plan some
claim Israel drew up to prevent such an attack. The plan was
called the Samson Option. An astute investigative journalist and
student of history chalked a dramatic potential solution to the
volatile equation on the blackboard - a decade ago.

"Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the
Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in
1973 [Yom Kippur War], or should any Arab nation fire missiles
again at Israel, as Iraq did [in the 1991 Gulf War], a nuclear
escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now
be a strong possibility."

Pulitzer Prize-winning author ("My Lai 4") Seymour M. Hersh
made this hypothesis in his 1991 best seller "The Samson
Option."

That said, the divinely empowered Samson pushed apart the
temple pillars - collapsing the roof and killing himself as well
as his enemies.

In his exposé of Israel’s clandestine nuclear arsenal, Hersh
suggested that in the early days (late 1960s) of crude
big-flash-and-bang nukes, one defensive option to counter an
attack on Israel with weapons of mass destruction was for the
beleaguered nation to mimic Samson and grimly trade holocaust
for holocaust.

Hersh's 1991 prognostication of a "strong possibility" of the
use by Israel of nuclear weapons rested on his knowledge that by
the mid-1980s, Israeli technicians at the super-secret Dimona
nuclear plant had produced hundreds of low-yield neutron
warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops
with minimal property damage.

Israel's ability to use nukes tactically and surgically,
however, has evolved a great deal since the Samson option was
still realistically an option.

Israel's Military Might

In 1997, Jane's Intelligence Weekly examined satellite
photographs of what it described as an Israeli military base at
Kfar Zechariah, concluding academically, "Israel's nuclear
arsenal is larger than many estimates."

According to Jane's, the site was said to house about 50
Jericho-2 missiles, believed to have a maximum range of about
3,000 miles with a warhead of about 2,200 pounds.

According to the report, the installation contained nuclear
bombs, configured for dropping from bombers.

Furthermore, five bunkers at the site were cited as capable
of safeguarding 150 weapons.

"This … supports indications that the Israeli arsenal may
contain as many as 400 nuclear weapons with a total combined
yield of 50 megatons," the report concluded.

In 1998 the New York Times reported a Rand Corp. study
commissioned by the Pentagon that opined Israel had enough
plutonium to make 70 nuclear weapons.

More light was shed on the issue in February of last year
when the Israeli Knesset (parliament) held the first public
discussion on the country’s nuclear arms program.

Issam Mahoul, an Arab Israeli MP and member of the Hadash
(Communist) Party, petitioned that country’s Supreme Court to
force the government to permit a parliamentary debate on the
forbidden subject.

The upshot of this bold and generally unpopular tactic was an
unprecedented televised session of the Knesset at which Mahoul
stated that, according to experts' estimates, Israel had
stockpiled huge numbers of nuclear warheads.

This had increased to what he described as the "insane amount
of 200-300." The weapons had been developed with the help of the
South African apartheid regime.

Working up a head of rhetorical steam, Mahoul grandly alleged
that three new German-built submarines just purchased by Israel
were to be fitted with nuclear weapons.

Their stated purpose, he said, was "to cruise deep in the sea
and constitute a second strike force in the event that Israel is
attacked with nuclear weapons."

Mahoul also announced what was hardly a news bulletin -
Israel was producing "biological warfare" weapons at the
government's Biological Institute in Ness Ziona.

The obstreperous MP concluded that the government's official
policy of "nuclear ambiguity" was the height of self-delusion.
"All the world knows that Israel is a vast warehouse of atomic,
biological and chemical weapons that serves as an anchor for the
Middle East arms race," he said.

Despite the bristling inventory of nukes, the Israelis have a
laudable history of restraint in brandishing, much less using,
these most destructive of all weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, for most of the latter half of the 20th century, the
Israeli Bomb remained invisible and unacknowledged. Israel's
official position was to neither confirm nor deny its nuclear
status, only pledging on the record "not to be the first to
introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East."

A Show of Restraint

According to Hersh, the best example of Israeli restraint in
the face of great provocation came during the Gulf War.

On the second day of the American invasion, Saddam Hussein
fired eight Scud missiles at noncombatant Israel. Two of the
conventionally armed missiles landed on Tel Aviv. Then Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir responded by ordering mobile missile
launchers armed with nuclear weapons moved into the open and
deployed facing Iraq.

The Samsonesque strongman of the Middle East had stirred -
and the world held its breath.

Promising Patriot missile batteries and loads of future aid,
the United States pressured Israel to keep cool. After all, the
allied coalition included a number of Arab nations, and the U.S.
feared that dramatic Israeli retaliation could fragment the
fragile alliance.

By the end of the Gulf War, Israel had dutifully absorbed 26
Scuds - none armed with biological or chemical weapons.

And therein lies the rub. What if the missiles had featured
biochemical agent warheads?

The refrain used consistently by the Israeli leaders has been
and remains an unqualified: "Israel reserves the right to
retaliate if attacked."

Traditionally, Israeli leaders have pigeonholed nuclear
weapons as a psychological insurance policy for unthinkable
contingencies, under the heading of "last resort."

The hope of those in the inner sanctums of national security
is that the exigencies of America's New War send no such
unthinkable contingencies in the direction of America’s quiet
ally.

David Eberhart is the former news editor for The Stars and
Stripes and Stripes.com. A retired military officer and the
published author of five novels, he recently contributed to the
New York Times best seller "Chicken Soup for the Veteran's
Soul."

This article
appeared freely on the Internet on August 9, 2006 at
http://www.carolmoore.net/nuclearwar/israelithreats.html and is archived here only for
scholarship, research, education, and personal use by those previously
requesting it in accordance with the "fair use" provision in Title 17 Section
107 of the copyright law.

"Arabs may have the oil, but we have
the matches."
Israeli leader Ariel Sharon

"Masada was not an example to follow--it hurt the Romans not a
whit, but Sampson in Gaza? With an H-bomb? What would serve the
Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of
massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting
European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens?"
David Perlmutter in Los Angeles Times

The United States government and
foreign policy under George W. Bush is run by neoconservatives tightly
linked to Israel's right wing Likud Party and to Christian Zionists who
believe an expansionist Israel will cause an apocalypse which will bring
back Jesus (and he'll promptly kill all the Jews who don't convert!).
Both groups desire to re-make the Middle East, in large part to make it
safer for Israel to keep and even expand the large portion of its land it
has illegally confiscated through state terrorism and military conquest
over the last 60 years. And the Democrats aren't much better.
However, Americans should consider carefully Israel's nuclear
weapons and its threats to use them if the United States ever withdraws
its full backing or if Israel's possession of its stolen lands is ever
seriously endangered. Threats include retaliatory -- or even preemptive --
attacks on Muslim, Russian and even European targets. Israel considered
the Soviet Union an enemy backer of Arab nations and thinks the new Russia
only a tad more trustworthy. Any attack on Russia, of course, would
quickly bring massive retaliation against Israel's greatest ally -- the
United States. No doubt this is a major reason U.S. political leaders
approach Israel with fear and respect -- and rarely punish it for its
violations of U.S. law, United Nations Resolutions, the Geneva Convention
and a variety of other treaties. Israel has a nuclear knife to America's
throat. As mentioned on this nuclear
war home page, the U.S.
government already threatened to use nuclear weapons, and even went on
full nuclear alert, to prevent any "Soviet aggression" in the Middle East,
especially to protect Israel in its pre-emptive and defensive wars of
1956, 1958, 1967, 1973, 1979 and 1982. Had there been some sort of
technical hardware or software accident, or misinterpretation of evidence,
any of those alerts could have resulted in a full scale nuclear war
killing most Americans.
However, just as threatening to Americans, and the world, is
Israel's aggressive stance towards using its own 200 to 400 nuclear
weapons -- ones which it has never formally admitted exist. These
weapons can be deployed by air, missile or submarine to almost any place
on earth. Therefore it is important
for people to learn about Israel's nuclear programs and Israel's many
threats to use them.

"SAMSON OPTION" Seymour M.
Hersh, the reporter who broke the story of the U.S. soldiers massacring
villagers at Mai Lai in Vietnam, published in 1991 the controversial book
The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.
The Biblical Samson, of course, brought down a temple that killed himself
and his enemies. According to the
namebase.org "The
title of Hersh's book comes from Israel's notion that once they have the
Bomb, they are in a position to bring it all down on everyone if ever they
feel cornered. It's the ultimate in Israeli security as a nation-state, if
not for the security of humankind. Israel used nuclear blackmail to force
Kissinger and Nixon to airlift supplies during the 1973 Yom Kippur War,
and they passed U.S. secrets collected by Jonathan Pollard to the USSR
when it served their interests. The Bomb has been a hidden factor in
U.S.-Israeli relations ever since the Eisenhower administration, but this
is the first book [to] deal with Israeli relations from this perspective."

The
Federation of American Scientists site notes: Strategically, Israel
uses its long-range missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft (and, some say,
submarines with nuclear-armed cruise missiles) to deter both conventional
and unconventional attacks, or to launch "the Samson Option", an all-out
attack against an adversary should defenses fail and population centers be
threatened. In addition, despite Israel's insistence that it "will not be
the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East," these
systems represent an effective preemptive strike force.

President Bill Clinton, despite his many faults, at least may have
distanced himself from this option. A Federation of American Scientists
1998
report on "Counterproductive Threats states: "Defense analyst Zeev
Schiff opined in independent Haaretz (2/4): "Too many senior Israeli
officials have taken to issuing threatening statements vis-a-vis Iraq and
Iran.... Off-the-cuff Israeli nuclear threats have become a problem, even
before the onset of the Iraqi crisis.... Washington may decide it wants to
distance itself from Israel in order to avoid being accused of having
conspired with us on an action we planned exclusively by ourselves."

However, in late 2002 U.S. President George Bush evidently approved
Israel's nuclear response to an Iraqi attack with biological and nuclear
weapons -- before the United States invasion. According to
News.Scotsman.Com in an article titled "Sharon eyes 'Samson option'
against Iraq
... [Israeli
Prime MinisterAriel]
Sharon - who is courting extreme right-wingers to prop up his teetering
government following the withdrawal of the Labour Party last week - has
spoken openly of his willingness to strike back, and strike back hard,
should his country be attacked by Iraq. ... Sharon's blunt admission that
a retaliatory strike would be ordered in the event of an attack on Israel
with non-conventional weapons came after discussions with US President
George W Bush.
Israeli officials later interpreted the president's stance as
giving the green-light to Sharon to attack Baghdad only if Iraq launched a
pre-emptive strike against the Jewish State before an American military
campaign had got underway.
The officials said if an American military offensive had already
begun, then Israel should show restraint and allow the US forces to
retaliate.

Of course, the
Samson Option has more and more become a pre-emptive war option as well.
Even an American University professor urged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon to be ready to attack any threatening nation first. Louis Rene
Beres, Professor Department of Political Science, Purdue University, in a
spring, 2001
open letter to Sharon reviewed by Israeli Insider wrote that Israel
"must rely upon
complementary nuclear and conventional forces, and upon the continuing and
associated availability of critical preemption options." Beres suggests
that Israeli nuclear deterrence has been significantly eroded and offers
little protection against the irrational calculations of Islamic fanatics
who see the destruction of the Zionist entity as a religious commandment.
He argues that the cost of an Israeli first strike on sources of the
nuclear, chemical and biological threats may be lower than waiting,
hopefully, for the elimination of these threats by other means or the
possibility that political agreements will reduce the likelihood of their
use.

In an article called
“Israel’s Sacred
Terrorism” Livia Rokach, in a study based on Moshe Sharett's Personal
Diary, and other documents describes Iraeli’s history of terrorism that
provides a context for these nuclear threats. The article is forwarded by
Noam Chomsky.

Israel has made countless veiled
nuclear threats against the Arab nations and against the Soviet Union
(and by extension Russia since the end of the Cold War). One chilling
example comes from Ariel Sharon, the current Israeli Prime Minister
"Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches."

In another example, Israeli nuclear expert Oded Brosh said in 1992,
"...we need not be ashamed that the nuclear option is a major
instrumentality of our defense as a deterrent against those who attack
us." According to [Israeli human
rights activist]Israel
Shahak, "The wish for peace, so often assumed as the Israeli aim, is
not in my view a principle of Israeli policy, while the wish to extend
Israeli domination and influence is." and "Israel is preparing for a
war, nuclear if need be, for the sake of averting domestic change not to
its liking, if it occurs in some or any Middle Eastern states.... Israel
clearly prepares itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire
Middle East..., without hesitating to use for the purpose all means
available, including nuclear ones."

...[sraeli Foreign Minister]
Shimon Peres; "acquiring a superior weapons system (read nuclear) would
mean the possibility of using it for compellent purposes - that is
forcing the other side to accept Israeli political demands, which
presumably include a demand that the traditional status quo be accepted
and a peace treaty signed." From a slightly different perspective,
Robert Tuckerr asked in a Commentary magazine article in defense of
Israeli nukes, "What would prevent Israel... from pursuing a hawkish
policy employing a nuclear deterrent to freeze the status quo?"

.....Another major use of the Israeli
bomb is to compel the U.S. to act in Israel's favor, even when it runs
counter to its own strategic interests. As early as 1956 Francis Perrin,
head of the French A-bomb project wrote "We thought the Israeli Bomb was
aimed at the Americans, not to launch it at the Americans, but to say,
'If you don't want to help us in a critical situation we will require
you to help us; otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs.'" During the
1973 war, Israel used nuclear blackmail to force Kissinger and Nixon to
airlift massive amounts of military hardware to Israel. The Israeli
Ambassador, Simha Dinitz, is quoted as saying, at the time, "If a
massive airlift to Israel does not start immediately, then I will know
that the U.S. is reneging on its promises and...we will have to draw
very serious conclusions..." Just one example of this strategy was
spelled out in 1987 by Amos Rubin, economic adviser to Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir, who said "If left to its own Israel will have no choice
but to fall back on a riskier defense which will endanger itself and the
world at large... To enable Israel to abstain from dependence on nuclear
arms calls for $2 to 3 billion per year in U.S. aid." ....

....It is clear from Israel Shahak
that Israel has no interest in peace except that which is dictated on
its own terms, and has absolutely no intention of negotiating in good
faith to curtail its nuclear program or discuss seriously a nuclear-free
Middle East,"Israel's insistence on the independent use of its nuclear
weapons can be seen as the foundation on which Israeli grand strategy
rests."

According to Seymour Hersh, "the size
and sophistication of Israel's nuclear arsenal allows men such as Ariel
Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East aided by the
implicit threat of nuclear force." .... Ze'ev Shiff, an Israeli
military expert writing in Haaretz said, "Whoever believes that Israel
will ever sign the UN Convention prohibiting the proliferation of
nuclear weapons... is day dreaming," and Munya Mardoch, Director of the
Israeli Institute for the Development of Weaponry, said in 1994, "The
moral and political meaning of nuclear weapons is that states which
renounce their use are acquiescing to the status of Vassal states. All
those states which feel satisfied with possessing conventional weapons
alone are fated to become vassal states."

..... Seymour Hersh warns, "Should
war break out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation
fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation,
once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong
probability." Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The
nuclear issue is gaining momentum (and the) next war will not be
conventional." Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a
major (if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported
that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was
to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive
data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (Since launching its
own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.)
Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate
disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the
unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously
destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual
use, if not for all out nuclear war.

Seymour Hersh sites other threats in The Samson Option.
Referring to the U.S. failure to support Israel's invasion of Egypt in
1956, including in the face of nuclear threats from the Soviet Union, one
unnamed former Israeli official told Hersh in the late 1980s: "You
Americans screwed us...We got the message. We can still remember the smell
of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we'll take all of you with us."

Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army writes extensively in a USAF Counterproliferation Center
paper on Israel's nuclear history and its threats to use weapons inThe Third Temple's Holy Of Holies: Israel's Nuclear Weapons
As the Israeli bomb comes out of the basement, open discussion, even in
Israel, is occurring on why the Israelis feel they need an arsenal not
used in at least two if not three wars. [Israeli arms specialist]
Avner Cohen states: "It [Israel] must be in a position to threaten another
Hiroshima to prevent another holocaust." In July 1998 Shimon Peres was
quoted in the Jordan Times as saying, "We have built a nuclear option, not
in order to have a Hiroshima, but to have an Oslo," referring to the peace
process [with the Palestinians].

(See original books and articles
for footnotes and sources.)

UNOFFICIAL THREATS FROM ISRAEL SUPPORTERS

Obviously, unofficial threats can be
more explicit and more threatening than those issued by politicians --
especially those below which were published in credible publications like
the Los Angeles Times or WorldNetDaily, and even those published by
extremists like those at Masada2000.Org. (And such extremists are very
powerful in Israel's political system.) Those issuing these threats
obviously feel no fear of criticism or ostracism by either the Jewish or
gentile communities, something which makes them more frightening.

In April 2002 Jewish academic
David Perlmutter in the Los Angeles Times inferred Israel under some
circumstances would launch revenge attacks against targets worldwide:
"Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews
understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for
them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was not an
example to follow--it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Sampson in Gaza?
With an H-bomb? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment
for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all
those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the
ovens? "For the first time in history,
a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks
away--unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or
Rwandans--have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?"

The same month Senator John
McCain's brother Joe wrote a piece called
NEVER AGAIN
which began with the statement: There is a lot of worry popping up in
the media just now -- "Can Israel Survive?" Don't worry about it. It
relates to something that Palestinians, the Arabs, and perhaps most
Americans don't realize -- the Jews are never going quietly again. Never.
And if the world doesn't come to understand that, then millions of Arabs
are going to die. It's as simple as that.

In September 2003 Tom Ambrose,
commentary editor of WorldNetDaily, made a similar veiled threat as the
last sentence of an article called "Big,
bad Israel?" attacking libertarians for daring to question Israel's
right to keep confiscated land and commit other human rights violations. In
light of this key role in which Israel helps guarantee U.S. security, it
is small wonder why so many people foam at the mouth in hope of the
appalling myopia on this matter is inexcusable. (And they wonder why
Americans are reluctant to vote them into office?) For if the day should
ever arrive that Israel is destroyed by its enemies, the U.S. willsurely and shortly thereafter meet
its own demise.

Israel Has Nuclear Weapons and MUST
Use Them and All Those Arming the Arabs Must Share the Pain! Israel must notify each of the Arab nations and their Western
backers that, if Israel is attacked or is about to be attacked with
unconventional weapons (or overwhelming conventional forces), there will
be a "Share the Pain" response... Therefore, Israel would be wise to notify each country that,
either pre-emptively or as a vicious second-strike option, Israel will
hit all hostile parties with nuclear weapons, regardless of who launched
the first attack. Israel will hold all collectively and severally
responsible - as if they had met and conspired together. ...One hundred or 200 nukes will reduce the hostile cities and
army sites of the Middle East to rubble in minutes. Of course, the
ensuing debris would also envelope those nations who sold the Arab world
the weapons of nightmares. After all, they enjoyed the money and clearly
understood that what they were selling was to be targeted at Israel. Perhaps with a dedicated and credible deterrence, the Europeans
selling weapons will make some effort, along with American Arabists, to
have the Arab nations stand down their plans which call for the
destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic State.... Prof. Martin Van Crevel, a professor of military history at the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recently put it this way... “Our armed
forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the
second or third. Israel has the capability of hitting most European
capitals with nuclear weapons. We have the capability to take the world
down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel
goes under.”

In further context,
Martin Van Crevel told interviewer Ferry Biedermann
in Jerusalem in a
widely quoted interview: "We possess several hundred atomic
warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions,
perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air
force".... Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rouge state if
it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Crevel quoted
former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said "Israel must be like
a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." Crevel argued that Israel wouldn't
care much about becoming a rouge state. "Our armed forces are not the
thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have
the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that
that this will happen before Israel goes under."

ARMAGEDDON LOBBY
The Israelis are supported and egged on in their expansionism and
intransigence by the "Armageddon Lobby," thirty million "Christian
Zionists" who believe Israel must expand to its Biblical borders in order
to bring on Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ. Many believe they
will be "taken" to heaven before they have to suffer in the nuclear
apocalypse that follows, some that they will be among the select few
raised from the dead. Of course, all believe that all Jews who do not
convert to Jesus will perish. Some believe that two-thirds of Jews must
die for prophecy to be fulfilled. Those right wing expansionist Jews who
recognize the Biblical reasons for Christian Zionist's real fervor ignore
the obvious anti-semitism of their religious views as long as it serves
Israel's purposes.
For an extensive list of articles about the Armageddon Lobby see the
web page
"Armageddon Lobby -- trying to hurry up God - Sharon's 'Christian' Muscle"
Some article titles include: “Some Fundamentalists Ache for Armageddon,”
"War as the Will of God,” “The Unannounced Reason Behind American
Fundamentalism's Support for the State of Israel." Most unsettling are a
series of articles under the title “Is Bush One of Them?” such as “Bush's
Armageddon Obsession" and “Bush's Messiah Complex.”
Michael Ortiz Hill in
Counterpunch
describes Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's book Bush at War:
Woodward writes: "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose
visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp... 'To
answer these attacks and rid the world of evil,'" says Bush. And again,
'"'We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in
defense of this great nation.' Grandiose visions." Woodward comments, "The
president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand
vision of God's Master Plan."

BBC: ISRAEL ATTACKED USS LIBERTY TO GOAD U.S.
INTO "NUKING" CAIRO
During the 1967 Six Day War Israeli aircraft and gunboats repeatedly
bombed and strafed the unarmed, U.S. flag flying intelligence ship the USS
Liberty for 75 minutes, killing 34 Americans and wounding another 170 --
and almost sinking the ship.
Survivors continue to claim vehemently that this was no case of
mistaken identity, as both the U.S. and Israeli governments insist.
An interesting nuclear theory is outlined in the article
USS
Liberty: How past relates to the future by Linda S. Heard which is
about the BBC4's Fall 2003 documentary broadcast "USS Liberty Dead in the
Water". "Dead in the Water's"
shocking suggestion that Israel may have pre-planned a deliberate
bombardment of an American ship by air and sea - so as to bring the
Americans on board their cause, assuming they would believe that Egypt was
behind the attack - we learned how close the Middle East came to nuclear
devastation on that warm June day.
After Liberty's astonished crew managed to send out an SOS signal
using a makeshift antenna, a U.S fleet of war some 500 miles away received
an order to dispatch two nuclear-armed fighter jets to exact a terrible
retribution on Cairo.
These were recalled by the then U.S. Defence Secretary literally
minutes before they could drop their deadly nuclear load. In usual
American double-standard style when it comes to the Mid-East, Israel
escaped coming under a similar threat when it was discovered to be the
perpetrator. In fact, the case was closed by order of President Lyndon B.
Johnson even though he personally doubted Israel's version of events.

1949: French and Israel atomic researchers start to exchange information.
Israeli Defence Force Science Corps begins two year geological survey of
the Negev desert in search of recoverable Uranium.

1952: Israeli Atomic Energy Commission is created. Its chairman, Ernst
David Bergmann of Israel's Weizman Institute of Science, "the father of
Israel's bomb," has been promoting nuclear armed missiles for Israel since
arriving after World War II. Newly elected President Eisenhower will
refuse to sell arms to Israel during his two terms, ending in 1960.
France sells them to Israel from 1955 to 1967.

1955: Under Atoms for Peace program, overseen by pro-Israel Lewis Stauss
who was head of America's Atomic Energy Commission, U.S. helps fund a
small Israeli nuclear research reactor. Strauss learned about Dimona and
its purpose before the U.S. government but did not inform the U.S.
government.

1953: Israeli researchers perfect a process for extracting Uranium, and
developing a new method of producing heavy water, which is a key
ingredient in the process. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be raised
to build Israel's nuclear bomb over the next twenty years, mostly from
American Jews; effort is led by Abraham Feinberg who financially backs
both Presidents Truman and Johnson, as well as presidential candidate
Adlai Stevenson. (John F. Kennedy accepts his money but is incensed by the
pro-Israel lobbying.)

1956: France and Israel formally and secretly agree to build a nuclear
reactor in the Negev desert. Britain, France and Israel invade Egypt
(Suez Canal crisis) and the Soviet Union threatens to use rockets against
them if they do not desist, leading to a cease-fire. U.S. begins U-2 spy
flights over targets world wide, including Israel.

1957: France and Israel sign a revised agreement calling for France to
build a 24 MWt reactor; unwritten was the agreement to build a plutonium
reprocessing plant.

1958: Israel breaks ground at Dimona, with assistance of French scientists
and contractors, and U-2 spy planes provide evidence Israelis are building
nuclear plant there.

1960: Israeli scientists witness first French atomic explosion in South
Pacific. French President Charles DeGaulle threatens to cut off reactor
fuel if Israel doesn't accept international inspections, but eventually
accepts Israel's assertions Dimona is only for peaceful purposes and work
continues. United States intelligence leaks to the press that Israel is
building a secret nuclear facility that will eventually produce a nuclear
bomb. Israel admits this to its Parliament and world but claims it is
only for peaceful purposes.

1961: President Kennedy makes the man who leaked Israel's bomb to the
press head of the CIA. Kennedy is very opposed to Israel having the bomb
and tells Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion so in many letters and in
meeting in New York about the purpose of Dimona. Ben-Gurion tells him its
purpose is peaceful and refuses to allow international inspections.
Israel launches its first rocket.

1962: Ben-Gurion allows inspections by American inspectors only in return
for sales of Hawk surface-to-air missiles. Israel builds a fake control
room and bricks off parts of buildings to hide from inspectors the true
size and purpose of the reactor (three times bigger than admitted) and
that it was connected to a plutonium reprocessing plant; this feint
continues during seven such inspections until they end in 1969. Reactor at
Dimona goes into operation.

1963: Kennedy refuses to sign any security arrangement with Israel.
After Kennedy assassination brings the very pro-Israel Lyndon Johnson to
power. (Not surprisingly there is an assassination conspiracy theory that
the Mossad
killed Kennedy.)

1964: Dimona plutonium processing plant goes online. In first official
visit by an Israeli Prime Minister (Eshkol) to Washington, Johnson
promises Israel offensive fighter jetst and other weapons if it refrains
from producing nuclear weapons. Israel's Eshkol eventually agrees to
Johnson's terms and holds off on producing the bomb. China explodes first
nuclear bomb.

1965: Israel performs its first plutonium extraction, and France assists
Israel in developing its Jericho missiles.

1966: U.S. begins fighter jet and arms shipments to Israel. Johnson
discourages further reports on Israel nuclear situation from U.S. embassy
in Israel. Israel refuses money for nuclear desalination plant which is
tied to international inspections of Dimona.

1967: Six Day War when Israel pre-emptively attacks an Egyptian military
buildup in the Sinai Peninsula. Israel attacks USS Liberty surveillance
vessel, killing 34 sailors; (see BBC allegation below that Israelis wanted
to instigate a U.S. nuclear attack on Cairo). Soviet Union supports Arabs
militarily, sends ships to the region and breaks diplomatic ties with
Israel. Americans unofficially inform Israel that the Soviet Union has
put four Israeli cities on its nuclear target list.

1968: Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, believing Israel cannot depend on the
U.S. to defend it, unilaterally orders full production of nuclear weapons,
averaging four to twelve per year, depending on size. Israel illicitly
imports two hundred tons of uranium.

1969: President Richard Nixon takes office and fully supports Israel's
nuclear weapons, as does his National Security chief Henry Kissinger. Ends
American inspections at Dimona and shares some nuclear targeting
information about the Soviet Union. CIA tries to inform President Johnson
about Dimona, but he brushes off information, signs Nonproliferation
Treaty, and sends Israel advanced Phantom fighter jets.

1973: Israelis catch Soviet spy ring in high levels of Israeli government
and make it clear to Soviets they have produced "suitcase nukes" they
could sneak into Russia. Egypt and Syria attack unprepared Israeli forces
in Sinai and Golan Heights on the Jewish fast in Yom Kippur War. Israel
goes on nuclear alert and begins to ready nuclear weapons for actual use,
forcing the U.S. to airlift them weapons and to start redeploying nuclear
armed ships and airplanes. When Soviets started talking about sending in
Russian troops, Israel again goes on nuclear alert. Washington pressures
Israel to accept a cease-fire.

1975: Israel receives nuclear-capable Lance missiles from the United
States, even as U.S. remains in official denial about Israel having
nuclear weapons.

1976: South Africa's Prime Minister visits Israel to sign several nuclear
and other agreements.

1977: Menachem Begin's right wing expansionist Likud Party takes power in
Israel and is determined with reshape Middle East to suit Israel's needs,
including through using the nuclear threat. Commits to nuclear targeting
of even more cities in the Soviet Union. President Carter does not take
on the issue, despite conducting Camp David peace talks between Egypt and
Israel.

1979: President Carter provides Israel ability to see American spy
satellite photos for defense purposes only, but Israelis manage to get
them for pre-emptive strikes against Middle East and Russia. Israel and
South Africa explode first nuclear bomb in South Indian Ocean but
appointed U.S. committee refuses to conclude it was a nuclear explosion.

1981: Israel, using U.S. spy satellite photos, sends F-16s to bomb and
destroy Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction at Osirak. U.S. strictly
limits further access to spy photos. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon
recruits American Navy employee Jonathan Pollard as a spy to obtain
satellite photos plus massive amounts of other classified information
about Israel's enemies, some of which Israel turns over to the Soviet
Union to try to win over its adversary. Ariel Sharon talks President
Reagan into a formal Israel-U.S. military alliance against the Soviet
Union but Defense Chief Weinberger delays and sabotages it.

1982: Under Ariel Sharon's military leadership, Israel invades Lebanon to
attack Palestinian militants as first part of plan to drive Palestinians
into Jordan, using the threat of nuclear weapons to intimidate any
adversaries. However, despite destroying Beruit and killing more than ten
thousand Arabs and 500 Israelis, Sharon's efforts in Lebanon fail. Israel
eventually withdraws and Sharon loses his position.

1985: Jonathan Pollard captured leaving office with stolen papers.
Eventually sentenced to life in prison.

1986: Mordechai Vanunu, a disaffected Dimona technician who left with
photographs and other evidence of nuclear weapons production, publishes
details in the London Sunday Times newspaper; reveals Israel has over 100
nuclear weapons. Israel starts disinformation campaign then lures him to
Italy where he is kidnaped, taken to Israel and imprisoned for 18 years.
He was released in spring of 2004 and remains under house arrest because
of his continuing contact with the media.

1987: Israel test-fires a Jericho 2 missile capable of carrying a nulcear
weapon. UN General Assembly and the IAEA General Conference passes first
of more than a dozen resolutions calling on Israel to join the
Nonproliferation Treaty.

1988: Israel launches its first spy satellite into orbit.

1991: U.S. convinces Israel to refrain from attacking Iraq with nuclear
weapons, even if Iraq uses chemical or biological weapons against it, but
Israel's nuclear weapons remain on alert.

2000: Knesset debates Israel's nuclear weapons program for first time.
Germany sells Israel three state-of-the-art 800-class Dolphin submarines
and Israel tests first submarine-launched missile in the area of the
Indian Ocean. Ariel Sharon is elected Prime Minister of Israel, still
intending to use nuclear weapons to bully other nations and remake the
Middle East for the benefit of Israel. George Bush is elected in the
United state and his neoconservative allies fully intend that the United
States help Sharon fulfill that mission. Right wing Israelis begin freely
talking about attacking other nations, including with nuclear weapons.

2001: Bush inflames Arabs by clearly taking sides with Israel's
expansionist aims, part of the reason for the September 11 attacks against
the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He obsesses about attacking
Iraq, not defending America against known Al Queda terrorists. Starts
planning war against Iraq after September 11 attacks, including option of
using nuclear weapons.

2002: George Bush gives Israel the go-ahead to use nuclear weapons
against Iraq if Saddam attacks Israel before the American invasion of
Iraq. Pentagon Office of Special Plans uses information from Iraqi
dissidents and Israel's Mossad to convince Americans that Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction that are an imminent threat against America. Israel
launches Ofek-5 satellite with a powerful new inter-continental missile.

2003: Israel repeatedly demands sanctions against Iran for its nuclear
program and threatens to bomb Iran's operating nuclear power plant,
despite Iran's threats to retaliate hard against Israel. Russia may have
sold Iran additional advanced missiles capable of shooting down Israeli
bomber and fighter jets. Russian President Putin proposes Security Council
formally call for establishment of a Palestinian state and arrests last of
the Jewish "oligarchs" who bought state industries for pennies on the
dollar under Yeltsin. Arab and other nations repeatedly ask that Israel
nuclear facilities come under international inspections. So does the head
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed el-Baradei.
United Nations General Assembly passes resolution that Israel join the
nonproliferation treaty by a vote of 164-4. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
tells Israeli newspaper that Israel will not dismantle its “special
measures” because the U.S. will not remain in the Middle East forever.

2004: Israel buys two more German submarines for delivering nuclear tipped
cruise missiles, making a total of five. Mordechai Vanunu's prison term
ending spring 2004.

ISRAELI NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT A MAJOR ISSUE

In anti-nuclear activist John Steinbach's year 2000 lengthy article Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Threat
to Peace Steinbach makes a good
case for making Israel nuclear weapons central to nuclear disarmament.
Many Middle East Peace activists have been reluctant to discuss, let alone
challenge, the Israeli monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region, often
leading to incomplete and uninformed analyses and flawed action
strategies. Placing the issue of Israeli weapons of mass destruction
directly and honestly on the table and action agenda would have several
salutary effects.

First, it would expose a primary destabilizing dynamic driving the Middle
East arms race and compelling the region's states to each seek their own
"deterrent."

Second, it would expose the grotesque double standard which sees the U.S.
and Europe on the one hand
condemning Iraq, Iran and Syria for developing weapons of mass
destruction, while simultaneously protecting and enabling the principal
culprit. Third, exposing Israel's nuclear strategy would focus
international public attention, resulting in increased pressure to
dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and negotiate a just peace in
good faith.

Finally, a nuclear free Israel would make a Nuclear Free Middle East and
acomprehensive regional peace agreement much more likely. Unless and until
the world community confronts Israel over its covert nuclear program it is
unlikely that there will be any meaningful resolution of the Israeli/Arab
conflict, a fact that Israel may be counting on as the Sharon era dawns.GENERAL LINKS TO RELEVANT
SITES, ARTICLES AND BOOKS

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